documentation of some failures, and other odds and ends.

this alternate cover might not be a failure, i honestly think it's pretty cool:

it's not quite as directly pertinent to the interior color palette, but it is a bit more, like, "hip," which isn't necessarily inappropriate, either.

for the sake of trying out some other options, i returned to my runner-up layout designs... they are not so good.

circles: they're cool, and some of these are pretty interesting, but the name of the game here is documentation of objects, which includes the full shape of the object, because that's the most descriptive depiction. and circles do not allow for that so much. (unless it's a record.)

and of course the equalizer. i wanted this to work so bad. i really tried. i just couldn't pull it together.
this was the point at which i gave in, understanding that if i had to try this hard to make it happen in the first place, it was probably not a successful design decision, and goodness knows how it would handle any other spreads. to be quite honest, i just didn't know what to do with it. this image was an in-between step, and it was never my intention to fill all the space with bars, but i was unable to do anything else with it, even just for a mockup.